Etymologically
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culture

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: UK /ˈkʌl.tʃə/, US /ˈkʌl.tʃɚ/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English culture (“cultivation, tillage”),[2][3] borrowed from Middle French culture, a learned borrowing from Latin, and directly borrowed from Latin cultūra (“a tending, care, cultivation, agriculture”),[3][4] from cultus, the past participle of colere (“to tend, guard; to till, cultivate”),[4][2][5] which is also the source of colony and cultivate.[3][6] The verb is from Middle French culturer, from the noun.[5][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The tilling of land: probably 1440[3] or the mid-15th century;[4] the OED's earliest sense, “worship”, from 1483, is obsolete and rare,[8] and a cultivated field is from 1557.[8]

Semantic evolution

From tilling the soil the word moved early in the 16th century to the cultivation of the mind or manners, first recorded about 1510 in Sir Thomas More's works;[3][9] the Century Dictionary noted that this use was not common before the 19th century except as a conscious metaphor, though Cicero had used it in Latin.[4] The rearing of a crop is from the 1620s, transferred to fish and oysters by 1796, and to bacteria grown in a prepared medium in 1880.[4][8] “Learning and taste, the intellectual side of civilization” is by 1805, in Wordsworth's Prelude,[3][4] and the collective customs and achievements of a people by 1867.[4] Culture vulture is from 1947.[4]

Timeline

  • c. 1440 – tillage.[3]
  • c. 1510 – cultivation of the mind.[3]
  • 1510 – verb, to cultivate.[5][8]
  • 1620s – rearing of a crop.[4]
  • 1805 – intellectual side of civilization.[3][4]
  • 1867 – customs and achievements of a people.[4]
  • 1880 – a culture of bacteria.[4]
  • 1947 – culture vulture.[4]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. The customs, arts, beliefs and institutions of a people or group, passed down from generation to generation.
  2. Intellectual and artistic achievement, and the appreciation of it.
  3. The attitudes and behaviour typical of a group or organization: company culture.
  4. (biology) The growing of microorganisms or cells in a prepared nutrient medium; such a growth.
  5. The cultivation of the soil or of plants or animals.

Verb

  1. To grow microorganisms or cells in a culture.
  2. (rare) To cultivate.
  • agriculture
  • acculturation
  • cult
  • cultivate
  • culture shock
  • cultural
  • cultured
  • horticulture
  • colony

Usage notes

Culture is a broad word for refinement of mind and taste,[10] while cultivation stresses the effort that produced it, and breeding good manners learned from upbringing.[10]

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  5. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  7. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ a b c d Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  9. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin